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Human Nature

36 images Created 1 Mar 2018

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  • Two persons can be seen at the entrance of the glacier ice cave owned and maintained by the Carlen family. The ice cave at the mouth of the Rhone Glacier is covered every year with huge sheets of fleece blankets. to slow down the inevitable melting of the glacier due to warmer climate.
    07-00532-singles-Rhonebreen.jpg
  • Alfredo Hoch (green jacket) and his wife Anja Behrens get ready to scale the Rhone Glacier along with their friend Ronny Miestas.. Huge fleece blankets cover parts of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland in an attempt to stall the inevitable melting of the snow and ice. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this image was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. While snow is a brilliant reflector of the energy from the sun, the darker ice absorbs the energy instead, accelerating the melting of the glacier. The color and darkness of glacier ice vary all over the world, depending on build-up of pollution, age of the ice, particles picked up by the ice and by microorganisms in the ice. The glacier ice is however rarely white as snow. With shorter winters and vanishing snow cover, the melting of the glaciers is accelerating.
    07-00532-Rhonebreen-02.jpg
  • Huge fleece blankets cover parts of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland in an attempt to stall the inevitable melting of the snow and ice. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this image was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. While snow is a brilliant reflector of the energy from the sun, the darker ice absorbs the energy instead, accelerating the melting of the glacier. The color and darkness of glacier ice vary all over the world, depending on build-up of pollution, age of the ice, particles picked up by the ice and by microorganisms in the ice. The glacier ice is however rarely white as snow. With shorter winters and vanishing snow cover, the melting of the glaciers is accelerating.<br />
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The Rhone Glacier (pictured) now melts more than 70 centimeters in thickness every week in the summer months. Between 1996 and 2006, an estimated 0.9 billion cubic meters of water melted yearly from the Swiss glaciers. That number is likely much higher today. Switzerland just had the hottest July since 1864, it has the lowest rainfall since 1921, and the rivers are running at record low levels. The covering of the glacier is the idea of Philipp Carlen, who owns and operates an ice cave at the mouth of the glacier. The glacier is still melting, but by covering it with blankets, he is able to attract tourists who are coming to see the dying glacier.
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  • Sophie Harrisch (89) has worked the ticket counter for the ice tunnel for over thirty years. - It is sad to see it disappear, she says. - Maybe it will one day come back? One can always hope, she adds. Huge fleece blankets cover parts of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland in an attempt to stall the inevitable melting of the snow and ice. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this image was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. While snow is a brilliant reflector of the energy from the sun, the darker ice absorbs the energy instead, accelerating the melting of the glacier. The color and darkness of glacier ice vary all over the world, depending on build-up of pollution, age of the ice, particles picked up by the ice and by microorganisms in the ice. The glacier ice is however rarely white as snow. With shorter winters and vanishing snow cover, the melting of the glaciers is accelerating
    07-00532-Rhonebreen-04.jpg
  • Two tourists at the entrance of the Rhone Glacier Ice tunnel. Huge fleece blankets cover parts of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland in an attempt to stall the inevitable melting of the snow and ice. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this image was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. The Rhone Glacier now melts more than 70 centimeters in thickness every week in the summer months. Between 1996 and 2006, an estimated 0.9 billion cubic metres of water melted yearly from the Swiss glaciers. That number is likely much higher today. Switzerland just had the hottest July since 1864, it has the lowest rainfall since 1921, and the rivers are running at record low levels. The covering of the glacier is the idea of Philipp Carlen, who owns and operates an ice cave at the mouth of the glacier. The glacier is still melting, but by covering it with blankets, he is able to attract tourists who are coming to see the dying glacier.
    07-00532-singles-Lakenstrekk 2.jpg
  • Lutz Lippsmeier and Sarah Clute-Simon do a selfie with their son Andrin Benno Lippsmeier (6 months). 30 years ago, when Lutz was here the first time, the glacier reached all the way to where they are standing in the picture. - It is very sad to see it disappear, Lutz says, and adds that it was very important to them to show it to Adrin now. - Who knows if ther will be a glacier left when he grows up?
    07-00532-Rhonebreen-05.jpg
  • Tourists walk along the edge of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland. To the left of them can be seen huge sheets of fleece blankets used to cover an ice tunnel. The Rhone Glacier now melts more than 70 centimeters in thickness every week in the summer months. Between 1996 and 2006, an estimated 0.9 billion cubic metres of water melted yearly from the Swiss glaciers. That number is likely much higher today. Switzerland just had the hottest July since 1864, it has the lowest rainfall since 1921, and the rivers are running at record low levels. The covering of the glacier is the idea of Philipp Carlen, who owns and operates an ice cave at the mouth of the glacier. The glacier is still melting, but by covering it with blankets, he is able to attract tourists who are coming to see the dying glacier.
    07-00532-Rhonebreen-01.jpg
  • Glaciologist David Volken inside the ice tunnel.. Huge fleece blankets cover parts of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland in an attempt to stall the inevitable melting of the snow and ice. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this image was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. While snow is a brilliant reflector of the energy from the sun, the darker ice absorbs the energy instead, accelerating the melting of the glacier. The color and darkness of glacier ice vary all over the world, depending on build-up of pollution, age of the ice, particles picked up by the ice and by microorganisms in the ice. The glacier ice is however rarely white as snow. With shorter winters and vanishing snow cover, the melting of the glaciers is accelerating.
    07-00532-Rhonebreen-06.jpg
  • A wind farm in Dublin in the Altamont Pass. The Clean Power Plan, released by the Obama administration August 2015, requires a big shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy to meet the goal of reducing emissions from energy production 32 percent within year 2030. Today, wind energy make roughly five percent of the total energy. The modern windmill can trace its roots back to some students and teachers in Denmark, who came up with the three blade turbine. Denmark was an early adaptor and has now almost 40 percent coming from wind. Wind power has been around for a long time in the US as well, with a steady improvement in technology and grid. The price is down to 2.35 cents per kwh and the wind energy industry now support 73.000 jobs, according to a new report from the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
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  • Roughnecks drilling a well north of Galveston in  Texas, hoping to strike oil at 14240 feet. According to BP, the total world proven oil reserves has now reached 1700.1 billion barrels, enough to meet 52.5 years of global production. That is, if the world is still habitable. If we were to burn all the proven reserves, it would be at least five times more than needed to push the planet past the two degree limit.
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  • A tourist swims with a snorkel among severely damaged coral reefs outside Cairns in Australia. On August 11th 2015, the australian conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the country’s climate goal; reduce carbon emissions by 26-28 percent within year 2030. That’s well beyond the goals of other countries, and the plan drew immediate criticism from the Foreign Minister of the Marshall Island, Tony  de Brum. “If the rest of the world followed Australia’s lead, the Great Barrier Reef would disappear,” he stated. “So would my country, and the other vulnerable atoll nations on Australia’s doorstep.” Tony Abbott famously declared getting rid of the carbon tax as his greatest achievement for women, claiming the tax cut would save every household 550 australian dollars every year. Australia is a big coal exporter. Of 459 million tonnes coal mined in 2013, more than 335 million tonnes were exported. The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland in Australia is the largest living colony of organisms on Earth, spanning 2.300 kilometres. An important nursery and food source for marin life, the reefs are now dying due to warmer oceans and acidification due to CO2.
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  • Farmer Frank Sibraa looks at a wheat grain from one of his fields. The field is suffering from drought and the yield considered a total loss.Farmers in Virginia, New South Wales and South Australia struggled with severe drought in 2007- following seven miserable drought years.
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  • Hotshots battling a wildfire in Tiller, Oregon back in 2002. Global warming triggers ever more and bigger wildfires. For the first time in its 110-year history, the Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is spending more than 50 percent of its budget to suppress the nation's wildfires, according to a report released  August 5th 2015. "Climate change and other factors are causing the cost of fighting fires to rise every year," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, "but the way we fund our Forest Service hasn't changed in generations.» The work done by hotshots and smoke jumpers is extremely dangerous, trying to contain and control the fire by cutting or burning off fuel on the ground. They are in good physical condition and have to be able to take care of themselves in case they get trapped by the unpredictable fires.
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  • The Yellow River, Huang He, gives and takes. <br />
Jin Henin (70) has lived by the river all his life. In 1938 a flood killed several hundred thousand.<br />
Today the problem is drought and pollution. 10 percent of the river is sewage.New super cities like New City of Zhengzhou are being constructed to accommodate a fast growing population and economy. The water demand from these cities will further stress an already exhausted river. The river is already at maximum capacity of usage.
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  • Tourists gaze at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing as the sun sets in a haze, colored yellow from air pollution. Pollution due to heavy dependency of coal is only one of China’s climate challenges. Warmer weather accelerates desertification of farmland in the north and west, while extreme weather cause flooding, mudslides and jeopardize agriculture in the country. China has more than 11,000 miles of coastline, and a one meter sea level rise could displace as much as 67 million people. With the economic progress comes demand for better living. There were 5 million cars in China in 2000. Now there are more than 120 million.<br />
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China have traditionally been holding back on climate negotiations,but in January US and China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, announced significant commitments to reduce their CO2 emissions within 2030. China is already the world leader in solar and wind power. They still have a long way to go; as of 2011, China produced 70% of its energy from coal, emitted more carbon dioxide than the next two largest countries combined (U.S.A. and India) and emissions had been increasing by 10% a year, according to a study done by chinese and canadian scientists in 2013.
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  • Farmer Han Fangyun walks through a field of carrots in this 2007 image. He believes his neighbor, a giant coal fired power plant, is to blame. After the plant came, pollenation of his fruit trees and corn fields failed. Linfen is one of the most polluted areas in the world.<br />
For years, China has resisted any outside pressure to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, citing their need and right to develop their economy. USA and China are the biggest carbon polluters in the world, and with both nations absent from international climate agreements, earlier climate negotiations have ended in toothless compromises.<br />
That could change with the COP21 Climate Conference in Paris. Already in December last year, both China and USA announced joint commitment to reduce emissions and increase renewable energy to 20 percent by 2030. China already has a substantial carbon trading system in place, second only to EU, and today (Sep 25th 2015) President Xi Jinping of China announced how their cap-and-trade system can help to halt their growth of emissions by 2030. <br />
Speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine one year ago, Dan Dudeck (VP of the Environmental Defense  Fund) said "If China is successful in using market forces to cap carbon and transform its economy, that may be the best shot we have to limit climate change."
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  • A boy stands in a desert like landscape in a refugee camp in Touloum in Tchad, close to the sudanese border. However, more than 23.000 refugees from Darfur, mainly women and children, live in the camp. The conflict in Darfur with its ethnic cleansing is also a direct result of climate change. Farmers and herders are pitted against each other over diminishing  pasture and resources. The barren land is taken over by the Sahara desert, which has expanded 60 miles over the last 40 years. Rainfall is down by 16-30 percent. Crops are failing. With further global warming, conflicts like Darfur are likely to be repeated on even larger scale.
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  • Severely undernourished Isra (25 days old) at a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in a camp for Darfur refugees in Iriba, close to the Sudan border. The genocide in Darfur with its ethnic cleansing is also a direct result of climate change. Farmers and herders are pitted against each other over diminishing  pasture and resources. The barren land is taken over by the Sahara desert, which has expanded 60 miles over the last 40 years. Rainfall is down by 16-30 percent. Crops are failing. With further global warming, conflicts like Darfur are likely to be repeated on even larger scale.
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  • Mahamoud Anja (left) fled drought and hunger in the 1980s. In 2003 he fled again, this time from the Darfur genocide. Two of his sons was killed in a sudanese air attack, and the Janjaweed was approaching. Mahamoud gathered what was left of his family and fled to the Iridimi refugee camp in Chad. Despondent, having left everything behind, he says; I’m no longer a man. The conflict in Darfur with its ethnic cleansing is also a direct result of climate change. Farmers and herders are pitted against each other over diminishing pasture and resources. The barren land is taken over by the Sahara desert, which has expanded 60 miles over the last 40 years. Rainfall is down by 16-30 percent. Crops are failing. With further global warming, conflicts like Darfur are likely to be repeated on even larger scale.
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  • Boatman Ousman pushes his boat through tall grass near Guité in the overgrown Lake Chad. The lake has shrinked to a twentieth of the size it was in 1963, according  to the United Nations Environment Programme. Major overgrazing and unsustainable irrigation projects from all the countries who share border in the area are contributing factors, resulting in loss of vegetation and a drier climate. With a projected temperature increase due to global warming and an advancing Sahara desert, the future does not look good. The picture was taken in 2007, when the boatmen still could access the lake via a connected river. Today the boatmen no longer dare sail for fear of Boko Haram fighters, according to AFP.
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  • Residents in Sirajganj on top of sand bags used to repair parts of a damaged road in their village.<br />
The low lying areas of Bangladesh are regularly flooded by the melting glaciers of Himalaya. They also suffer regularly from drought caused by warmer weather. With rising sea levels the farmland gets destroyed by salt water intrusion.
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  • Poultry farmer Mohammad Korban Ali is depressed. During a heatwave earlier in the summer one third of his chickens died from heat stroke. In August a flood drowned half of the hens that had survived the heat. - It has been a bad summer, he says.<br />
The low lying areas of Bangladesh are regularly flooded by the melting glaciers of Himalaya. They also suffer regularly from drought caused by warmer weather. With rising sea levels the farmland gets destroyed by salt water intrusion.
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  • A worker with his tools in tow along a canal in what used to be rainforest in Riau in Sumatra. The forest was illegally cut down and sold as wood pulp, and the peatland likely replanted as a palm oil plantation. The pulp and paper industry is one of the driving forces behind deforestation, along with acacia and oil palm plantations. The region is also a rich source for coal, and Indonesia is projected to export 300 million tonnes in 2015. The slash and burn together with the logging has made Indonesia the third worst emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and USA. The rain forest in Borneo and Sumatra, once a vital carbon sink, will largely dissappear within twenty years if today’s pace continues. According to a Greenpeace study from 2011, up to 88 percent of the logging activities are illegal.<br />
Borneo and Sumatra are the habitats for the critically endangered Sumatra tiger (fewer than 400) and the Sumatra elephants (2400-2800), along with orangutans and Sumatra rhinos. These animals are likely to go extinct as the rainforest is wiped out.
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  • Abdul Majed used to be a rice farmer in the Khulna province. He now makes a subsistence living as a shrimp farmer. With the sea level rising due to global warming, vast areas with rice paddies are now being destroyed by salt water intrusion. With the paddies destroyed, Abdul turned the same paddies into shrimp farm instead. He now makes more money than before, delivering 12-15 crates of shrimp every other week. – This has been good for my economy, he says, but admits the changing weather patterns and salt water intrusion worries him.<br />
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According to the World Bank, coastal Bangladesh can easily see a 15 percent drop in rice production in the coastal regions within year 2050. The Khulna region is already damaged by salt water, but attempts are made to grow different kinds of rice that can handle the stress.<br />
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One of the poorest countries in the world, Bangladesh is also one of the countries most vulnerable to climate changes. With a sea level rise of 1.5 meter, close to 17 million people will be affected, according to GRID-Arendal, a knowledge center collaborating with UNEP.
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  • Straphangers on a bus in New Dehli. The 2007 arrival of the Tata Nano, a modestly outfitted car with a price tag of 100.000 rupies (appr. USD 1500,-) made it affordable for many Indians. Car ownership in India has doubled every 8-10 years, according to World Resources Institute, and it is hurting the country. A WHO study from 2014 found that 13 of the world’s  20 most polluted cities are in India. While government is focused on upgrading the road system, some businesses are encouraging their emplyees to use public transportation instead. Subsidies for car-pooling or public transportation and designated company buses are among innovative solutions to make the commute easier. Given these options, 30-50 percent of the workers switched from cars to public transit, which also reduced their travel time and cost of commuting. The third largest emitter of CO2, India has historically resisted any responsibility for their CO2 contribution. Their argument was that the emissions were low per capita as well as historical. According to an article in Clean Technica August 13th 2015, that stand could be about to change. Their findings indicate that India is looking to actively reduce emissions  and advocate carbon tax to be adopted by the G7 countries.
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